Emails Sent by Gyms, Fitness & Workout Professionals

Gyms are temporarily closed, forcing a shift in people working out from home and an increase in weight training equipment sales.

In this week’s blog post, we are taking a deeper look into the messages sent out by fitness brands during the global pandemic.

We analyzed the emails sent out by several brands and withdrew the lessons and good case practices that you can use for your own brand.

Promote At-Home Gym Equipment

Gym equipment sales for personal use has increased remarkably. E-commerce brands and manufacturers have taken advantage of the lockdown to push their equipment using a myriad of cross-channel messages, including email marketing.

Gaiam, which is a brand selling yoga mats, props, clothing, and accessories, has adapted its messaging when the behavioral shift started.

Their email about home gyms explains to subscribers how they can improve their at-home workouts using Gaiam products.

Pump up your home gym

This next email takes another approach to promote fitness products. In this example, one product only is highlighted: the hip band. And the email serves as sort of a guide or a manual for the subscriber, teaching them how to use the hip band for a quick and simple at-home workout.

The email starts off by listing the benefits of the hip band. Using visual aids, the email walks the reader through different exercises she can do at home.

So Hip

The same approach was followed by Berlei in their email featuring the 3 home workout essentials. The subject line is intriguing and compels anyone to click on the email and find out the answer.

The main email headline reads: No Gym? No problem! which basically sums up the entire marketing strategy that the brand is following at the moment.

The 3 workout essentials are then displayed, accompanied with a short explanation and well-placed CTA. The offer is paired with 30% discount, making it difficult for anyone to resist this perfect sales pitch.

3 home workout essentials

Notice how at the end of the email, a video is embedded, which is known to increase engagement rates. Learn how you can embed videos in your emails too.

It is important to diversify your messages and find different uses for your products. This guarantees that you reach multiple audience members, despite the diversity of their interests and motivations.

In this next email, for example, the brand Gaiam combines the two aspects dominating the lockdown: working from home and working out from home. The outcome shows innovation and creativity.

Upgrade your seat

Sports for Mental Health

After exercising, the body releases endorphins. These chemicals interact with brain receptors to decrease your perception of pain, which basically means: exercising makes you happy and decreases stress levels.

This is a great message that fitness brands can communicate with their customers. In times of uncertainty, people are more anxious. Lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing.. these are all terms that trigger small doses of cortisol and adrenaline, and leave your customers feeling anxious and uneasy.

Your brand should respond to that with a solution to calm down fears and help reduce stress. This email example from Gaiam accomplishes that wonderfully by promoting their blog posts about the benefits of yoga on mental health.

Yoga poses to help stress

Promote Your Workout App

You can attract more customers by creating online classes for home workouts. If your brand has developed its very own app, make sure to promote it to your existing customer base. They already use your products, and are part of your email list, so chances are, they will be the first to try out your app.

This email is meant to promote the newly created fitness app. But instead of simply asking subscribers to download it, the brand’s approach was to promote the classes shared in the app. The courses are described in a short paragraph, and the email ends with a big Download it CTA.

Yoga for Mental Health

Hold Contests & Giveaways

Who doesn’t like a fun giveaway? Contests and free giveaways guarantee an increase in engagement rates. And a collaboration between your brand and another complementary brand can also bring you a larger customer base and new prospects.

If you want to hold a contest, start by sending an email like this one down below to announce the rules of participation, and the prize to win.

Many brands choose to use multiple digital channels to reach a wider audience. Notice how the email footer includes a hashtag and the handles of both brands.

Look good, feel great!

Propose Lockdown Activities

It’s been months since we’ve been in lockdown. And with every passing day, it is becoming more and more difficult to find new and innovative ways to entertain ourselves. Which brings us to this next email campaign idea. Promote your website content with a newsletter that inspires subscribers on what activities they can do at home.

Discover a home practice

Celebrate Holidays & Events

Celebrating holidays is a bulletproof, tried and tested method to increase sales. And there is no shortage of events that you can take advantage of.

From a heartfelt message to your mommy customers.

Happy Mother’s Day

To a fun unexpected email on April Fools.

One Day Only!

The one thing in common: a tempting discount and a great email design.

Hip hooray, one more day!

Plan Something for the Kids

Your brand can become the knight in shining armors for all the parents stuck at home, unable to entertain their children.

We love this email example that starts off with a clever, self-explanatory headline: Active Kids, Happy Kids. Solution, Benefit. The email is not selling a product, it’s selling happiness, calmness, alone-time for parents.

The next email blocks showcase all the exercise equipment that was made specifically for the young ones.

Active Kids – Happy Kids

Another approach is to focus on one specific product. The fun name Stay-n-play balls are already enough to communicate the benefit of this new product. The email doesn’t mention anywhere that the product is meant for kids. however, the email design, colors, fonts, and images all indicate clearly that it’s destined for younger customers.

New Stay-n-play Balls

Use Testimonials

Including customer testimonials in your emails is always a good idea. It added a sense of credibility to your message and portrays you as a trustworthy brand.

Customers believe what other customers more tell them than they believe what brands tell them. In fact, 94% of online customers read reviews before making any purchasing decisions.

Why not use this consumer behavior to your favor by adding your best customer comments and reviews to your promotional emails.

You can promote multiple products at once, like in this email example.

Or you could focus on one main product, and share a personal story from a loyal customer, like in this email example.

“Take it from a fitness maniac”

 

Teach them about Gym Gear Sizes

One of the main things that I hate in online shopping is choosing the right size.

If you are promoting a new line of gym gear, a great email campaign idea would be to teach your customers how they can find their right size.

In this email example, the brand walks the reader through the dos and don’ts of buying a sports bra online.

READ THIS BEFORE YOU BUY A NEW SPORTS BRA

An Example of an Emailing Schedule by Bulk Powders

Bulk Powders is a bodybuilding supplement and sports nutrition brand. They sell vitamins, fat loss protein and creatine shakes, and more nutritional products for amateur athletes.

Bulk Powders use email marketing to promote their products and discounts and maintain tight and open communication with their customers and subscribers.

They send emails very regularly. In the month of May 2020 alone (counting from May 1st to May 26th), Bulk Powders send 27 emails.

Here’s their calendar of  Bulk Powder’s emailing

You can also check out all the emails that were sent by Bulk Powders in the gallery below. The emails are showcased in chronological order and are titled by the subject line.

 

Wrapping Up

The unusual times that we are experiencing at the moment have brought with them usual benefits for some e-commerce categories and mainly fitness gear brands. The silver lining of this period is that your brand can establish itself as one of the main players for your niche.

Use the email marketing campaign ideas mentioned above to spice up your emailing and increase your engagement rates.